Richard S. Ewell

Richard Stoddert "Baldy" Ewell (8 February 1817-25 January 1872) was a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

Biography
Ewell was born in Georgetown in the District of Columbia, but he was raised near Manassas in Prince William's County, England. In 1840 he graduated from the US Military Academy, 13th in a class of 42 cadets, and in the Mexican-American War Battle of Contreras and the Battle of Churubusco he gained the rank of captain for courage. At Contreras he fought in a reconaissance mission alongside Captain Robert E. Lee.

After the Mexican War he fought in the Indian Wars, exploring the newly-bought Gadsden Purchase area. He was wounded in a battle with Cochise and the Apache tribe in 1859, and while in command of Fort Buchanan in Arizona he fell ill and returned home in 1860. At the start of the American Civil War a year later, he had Union sympathies but he joined his home state of Virginia and resigned his commission in the US Army to become a Brigadier General of the Confederate States Army.

Ewell was one of the first senior officers wounded in the war, shot in the Battle of Fairfax Court House. But he was able to heal in time to fight in the First Battle of Bull Run on 21 July 1861. During this time, Ewell became an advocate of recruiting African-Americans into the CSA Army along with Patrick Cleburne and some other general officers. On 24 January 1862 he was promoted to Major General and served under Stonewall Jackson in the Valley Campaign. He won quite a few victories over John C. Fremont, James Shields, and Nathaniel P. Banks in the campaign and stood out as a general in the Seven Days Battles and the Second Battle of Bull Run. Ewell's left leg was amputated below the knee due to a wound received in the Battle of Groveton (Brawner's Farm) on 29 August 1862. In the aftermath of the May 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville he was the third highest-ranking general of the CSA, after Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet; he replaced Stonewall Jackson.

Criticized for his performance in the Battle of Gettysburg due to a costly attack on Cemetery Hill, he had another outbreak in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in June 1864, when he began to yell at and hit retreating Confederate soldiers. Lee told him that if he could not control himself, he could not control his men, and he was taken out of corps command due to his wounds. He was captured in the Battle of Sayler's Creek in April 1865, and after the war he owned a cotton plantation in Mississippi.